Riding the Tiger
by a sea of sound
Summary: In which Neil does some soul-searching after meeting the perplexing Rachel of Echo farm. Random revelations and sexual harassment ensue.


**In which Neil does some soul-searching after meeting the perplexing Rachel of the Echo farm. Random revelations and sexual harassment ensue.**

* * *

Rachel was—

"Neil! You're back!"

He recognized the old, gruff, yet familiar voice of Dunhill. Neil stopped in his tracks (as did the cow he's tending to) to greet the amiable old man with whom he had grown well-acquainted after he ran away from home. Dunhill's eyes crinkled and the corners of his mustache rose in his subtle smile.

"Hey, Dunhill. How've ya' been?" Neil asked. The older man sighed a bit tiredly, closing his eyes and slumping his back.

"I've been better. Hell, this town's surely been better, but did you hear? Some old friends of mine's kid came out here to take over the abandoned Echo ranch over yonder."

Neil couldn't help but try to feign his astonishment.

He failed.

_Who would ever want to move out here?_

"Who would ever want to move out here?" he blurted out. It cam out before he could stop it, and Dunhill's expression faltered a little.

"I know, kid. But she's here and clearly, she ain't leaving."

Dunhill strode over to the southern path near Emma's house, where none of the villagers have gone in years. Neil remembered it as a wasteland riddled with trees and creaky old buildings, but what he saw wasn't quite what he had expected. The trees were all gone, the old buildings refurbished. New amenities with the latest farming technology have been scattered across the vast fields; Neil couldn't say that he wasn't impressed.

"Now, where is she...Rachel?" Dunhill knocked on the wooden front door of a small country-style house. No answer. "Rachel, are you asleep? I'm coming in..." Without much caution he opened the door, revealing a neat room with every needed living amenity inside it. Before entering Neil tied his cow to the wooden fence around the barn.

The room smelled of lavender, freshly cut lumber, and... smoke? A green twin bed lay to the back of the room with a small wooden nightstand, and next to that was a tall old-fashioned chiffarobe for clothing, Two doors were relegated to the adjacent wall, and Neil assumed that they are for sanitary purposes. To the left was a tiny kitchen that seemed to have fallen into disrepair with an ancient-looking refrigerator, and lastly, in the center lay a pristine dinner table with a green tablecloth, two chairs on either side, and...an ashtray.

But other than that the house appeared to be empty.

"Hm, she isn't here. Where could she have gone?"

Neil followed him out of the house when he heard a loud laugh. He spotted a young woman tending to the cow he left outside by the barn. The cow didn't seem to be bothered by the woman's hand on her little tuft of hair, which confused Neil greatly. When he first got her she was a very skittish animal, not very trusting of people or anything that moved. Yet she looked almost content around this stranger.

"Ah! Rachel, there you are. This is Neil, the animal dealer of Echo Town. That's his cow there," Dunhill said, gesturing toward Neil and the cow.

Seemingly iridescent blue eyes observed him as she continued to pet _his _cow. The action slightly irritated him.

She said nonchalantly, "Hey, I'm Rachel. Nice to see someone else around these parts 'cause Goddess damn is this place _dead!_ Oh, and your cow is the cutest thing in the world, by the way."

The cow—_his cow_—watched him with lethargic milky eyes, chewing on fodder. How did Rachel even have fodder anyway? She didn't have animals, or at least not yet. Perhaps Neil did not want to acknowledge that she could be better with animals than he was, and that scared him somewhat. He comforted himself with the fact that the animal didn't really seem to like him, and at the very least she appeared to be in the apparently good hands of the new farmer.

"I guess she likes you. You can have her, if you want. Just give her a name and be done with it."

There really was no cure for his constant grumpiness.

* * *

Rachel was odd.

Her long blond hair was odd with its odd shine and odd semblance to the sun. Her oddly fair skin was oddly too fair and possessed an oddly ethereal glow. Her odd blue eyes were too blue, like the sky. (Why was the sky blue, anyway? Neil always seemed to forget the answer.) Her nose was too upturned and her mouth too full, but why was he even looking at it?

(Her chest was a little underwhelming, yet her behind was not exactly something to scoff at. He didn't know why he even knew how to describe her, ahem, _womanly features_, anyway. Oh well. Even if he sometimes didn't act like it or feel like it, Neil was still a man at the end of the day.)

The clothes she wore on a daily basis were the only attribute of hers that wasn't odd. After all, it was typical farmer attire to wear overalls and have cowboy boots and wear cowboy hats and cow-printed accessories. Maybe her clothing choice was _too _typical, and that made her even odder than she already was.

"_Damn!"_

Neil stopped abruptly, causing the animals he was guiding to moo and cluck in impatience. He turned to see Rachel standing by a tree stump infested with an abundance of wild plants with a smirk on her odd face. He frowned.

"What do you want?"

"You have a _fat_ _ass!_"

He felt his face turn scarlet, but he didn't know if her two syllable damn was a compliment or just plain harassment. Then he remembered she was from the city and only recently moved here to Echo Town, but that certainly didn't give her the excuse to sexually harass him.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, hoping to at least find a shred of intimidation in those invasive blue eyes.

"Hey, what's the harm in giving you a compliment? I just said you had a nice ass, is all. You don't have to be such a virgin about it." She took a small step forward and the tiny movement made him uncomfortable. "You can stare at my ass too, if you want. I don't mind, and it's pretty nice one too if I say so myself."

Neil could have sworn his face was as red as he was virginal.

(Which was not hyperbolic in any sense.)

* * *

Rachel was soft.

Neil lay in his dark room alone, pondering about how Rachel seemed to have an Achilles' heel in that confident yet guarded exterior of hers. She seemed to enjoy the company of Toni and his outrageous plans for technology, a phase almost every human on the planet grows out of. Neil was never particularly fond of children, but the kid appeared to really admire Rachel and her stories of the city, about cell phones that could do anything and large flat-screen televisions and celebrities. Most of the citizens in Echo Town grew up in rural villages, and Toni and his mother Rebecca weren't an exception.

She passed by in the morning with that familiar air of overconfidence, blonde hair flying like the wild spirit she was. He tried not to notice the thick smell of lavender and cigarettes, but it seemed that every part of her just invaded everything.

"Hey, Neil. You like Moondrop Flowers, right?" she said, taking out her rucksack and dumping all of its contents onto his dark wooden floor. He scowled and couldn't restrain himself from making a comment.

"Can you not make a mess _in my house_? If you haven't noticed you're not on your property. Why are you even here, anyway?"

Rachel didn't seem to hear him as she yelled, "Aha!" and took out the common wild flower, with its golden petals and vivid green stem. She offered it to him with what looked like a genuine smile, and he felt his insides shrivel up with a feeling that could only be identified as guilt. For once she didn't seem to be trying to undress him with her eyes, and as usual he was being a total prick. He made himself feel better with the thought that he was never good with people, which was why he loved animals so much. (Also, he tried not to dwell on how _soft_ her hand was when he took the flower from her.)

"Uh, thanks. Just clean up your mess, all right? I don't want any traces of _your_ mess in _my_ house."

"No problem. You owe me then, by the way. And Toni, he helped me look for one." she laughed.

Neil changed his mind. His insides hardened and returned to normal.

* * *

Rachel was...provocative.

It was not a secret that she enjoyed flaunting herself whenever a young man was present. Rather, she did it every chance she got. After all, she was an attractive young woman with her perfect minx smirk, her eyes as blue as an adamantite, her skin the color of porcelain, and her long blonde hair like that of an angel. Of course, that was the description of a starved artist searching for his muse, which Neil was not. Instead, he rather hated how she smelled like smoke and the way she didn't walk, but _sashayed _around town like she owned the place. However, it was fairly probable that he, too, was attracted to Rachel's charm.

She was not exactly the sweet, courteous, charitable princess that she looked like. Dunhill had a hard time overcoming his surprise that his quiet and conservative friends had produced such an outgoing and outspoken offspring, and he found himself wondering if Rachel had had any siblings. And if she had, then it was not a surprise that she grew up into such an anomaly. However, Dunhill hadn't recalled any mention from his friends of any other children they may have had, except for Rachel's twin brother Henry who was out of town somewhere far off.

By accident Neil happened to spot her chatting with the new hairstylist who just recently moved into Echo Town. Allen was not someone Neil ever associated with, seeing as though he cut his own hair and preferred it that way. Besides, he didn't like people touching him. Any part of him. Especially not with their eyes. That being said, Neil couldn't comprehend the unfamiliar feeling of the large knot in his stomach as he stalked Rachel and Allen's smooth conversation. Allen seemed to come off with that air of confidence which Neil had previously only associated with Rachel, and the thought ate at him a little.

He halted and nearly dropped whatever the hell was in his arms (he couldn't remember) when he heard, _"Neil is so sexy."_

Allen chuckled and grinned as Neil and Rachel made eye contact, the latter with her usual smirk on her face. She stood nearly hip-to-hip with the red-headed male, except he was leaning to the left and Rachel to the right. The one thing that was different was that she held a cigarette between her middle and index fingers like a pro; the action vaguely reminded Neil of a dark-haired middle-aged man sitting on a tattered red armchair, with bad breath, yellow fingers and even worse teeth.

"Neil, come here."

Her voice was so smooth like a siren song, even with the simplest phrase "come here." In spite of Rachel's allure, Neil was unaffected by her song as Odysseus' men were with beeswax over their ears. He continued to walk home, completely forgetting about the Moondrop Flowers he held previously, and pretended not to have heard or seen any of the inappropriateness that was Rachel. It angered him and frustrated him that she was so open and just blatantly didn't care, although he didn't know why he himself cared. Neil never cared for anyone but himself and his animals; why start now?

"Neil," she said, and by then he was already at his door. His eyebrows furrowed as he turned around to glare at her, sharp red eyes and all.

"What?" he demanded, wishing she would just flinch for Goddess' sake. She didn't, for the record.

"I was just gonna ask if you wanted a smoke, y'know, with me and Allen?" Her hand was outstretched towards him, where a single white and orange cigarette lies. Her voice didn't sound hopeful and it had lost the charming quality it possessed just mere minutes ago. Instead, she just sounded like a regular person casually asking a friend to hang out, but it disgusted Neil. It reawakened memories of drunken shrieks and angry faces and rancid breath... and hands.

_"Yer kid's got that shaggy blond hair thing goin' on. My wife woulda loved a kid like that, 'cept all of our kids's got that buzzed brown hair."_

_"Yeh? Well, 'e's a brat. I wish you could get him offa my hands but the lady won't let me, y'know? Not even sure if he's even my kid, but the bitch went crazy this one time I beat the shit out of 'em for breakin' my pipe. Don't even know what her problem is. She's never home to see the little fucker anyway."_

Neil struggled to pull himself out of his nightmarish reverie, and struggled even more to get his response out. "No. Have fun killing yourself with your boyfriend."

He pivoted around to open his door when he heard a loud giggle. Surely girls didn't actually giggle, did they? It must've been his mind messing with him, or his memory.

"Allen's not my boyfriend, Neil. We're just friends, and a _little _too provocative for our own goods, but we're friends."

She took a step toward him and he felt his heart rate increase at an unsteadily rapid pace as she stared at him intently, never breaking eye contact. Rachel smiled then, a real teeth-and-all smile, and it made him even more nervous if that were possible because she was strange and beautiful and perfect and way too close to him and he could basically feel her breath and every move—

"Why? Were you jealous?" she whispered, her lavender and cigarettes scent overcoming his senses. He took a sharp breath—

And then she stepped back and admired her handiwork (heavy breathing, red faces, refusing to look up). In those few seconds he felt like some stupid guinea pig for a science experiment she conducted, what with that proud expression on her face; then she laughed and it somehow sounded mocking. "I like you, Neil. You're cute and short and easily flustered."

"I-I'm not short," he said, and mentally cursed himself for his voice cracking. _Easily flustered?...I'm not cute, either!_

And then she was gone, mumbling something about virgins, but not before tapping him lightly on the nose and handing him the Moondrops he foraged. Opening his door, he slumped onto his unmade bed.

For a terrifying moment he stopped breathing, feeling something poking at his thigh.

But then Neil remembered that he was, after all, a man.

* * *

Rachel was drunk.

"I hate my dad," she slurred, blue eyes milky and unseeing, though they held a sharp quality to them; it was almost like the very image of anger, but expressed in a strange, subtle way.

(Neil had been sitting at his small dining table, mindlessly eating his dinner and enjoying his off-days. He contemplated what he would do the next day; perhaps chat some with Rod, or maybe head to the forest or river areas to check on the wild animals.

But then he was interrupted by some loud knocking at exactly nine o'clock while he was washing his dishes, and the sudden noise startled him. In a quiet, run-down town such as Echo, you don't get many crimes, if ever; plus, most residents here all had occupations that required them to rouse early in the morning, so no one was ever walking around at this time of night. Neil felt the familiar feeling of the corners of his mouth tug downward as he gingerly walked toward the door. Another incessant knock was delivered just as he heard, "Neil! Open the fucking door!"

He instantly felt a vein bulge on his forehead. When he opened the door, he saw Rachel, drinking straight out of a glass wine bottle. Her eyes were heavily lidded and shadowy, the white button down she wore under her overalls unbuttoned at the top. That made him further notice the lack of care she put into making herself look presentable, if she even cared, that is. The usual red scarf she wore was gone as was her hat, presumably discarded somewhere on her farm. One of the suspenders on her overalls was unbuttoned and hanging down; he instantly blushed when he noticed he could perfectly see her red bra because of it.

If Allen saw her in her dilapidated state, she'd never hear the end of it.

And thus brings Neil to his current situation, and his wondering why he ever let her inside his home in the first place.)

"He's always talking about how _great_ I am, or how _pretty _I am, or how _smart _I am. Sure, I'm pretty damn great and pretty and smart, but that's the only thing he ever says about me, like seriously?" she paused, taking a long swig of her wine, and then winced from the high tannin content. After all, where would she get wine around these parts if she didn't make it herself? "He doesn't know me at all. All he sees is the stupid beauty pageant debutant crap my mom made me do in high school, goddamn honor roll certificates which pretty much _anyone _can receive, and occasionally my picture in the newspaper helping some cause for animals that _he _forced me to do, because he apparently loves animals so much." Rachel rolled her eyes and unintentionally slammed her fist on the table.

Neil felt anger licking at him; he hated when people used animals as an excuse to appear humane and charitable, as if they were nothing but pawns in selfish people's schemes for fame.

"And then he forces me to move here, to take up Grandpa's old farm, just because he caught me with a boy and a freakin' bottle of rum in my room once! That wasn't even the first time I had a boy in my room! Actually, there were millions, and did I ever mention that I was a total whore in high school? But I'll get to that later"—Neil hoped she wouldn't—"and _I'm twenty fucking years old!_ _Daddy _probably got fed up with me because I didn't go to college like he planned before I was even born. And besides, I was only giving that guy in my room a blowjob! It's not like we were actually doing it!" Neil cringed at the mental image that comes to mind, feeling disgusted and scandalized, but otherwise slightly interested and fascinated by Rachel's anecdotes (however angry and uproarious she's being).

He couldn't bear to meet her eyes after her many revelations of her past, but then he looked up at her against his will to see that she was crying, albeit silently. Though Neil had virtually no experience with emotions, it wasn't rocket science to know that silent tears are the worst and probably most emotional of them all. In his panicked state he avoided looking at her again, feeling profoundly awkward and anxious.

"Neil?"

He cleared his throat, "Y-yeah?"

"Do you love me?"

A pause.

A silence.

A lifetime.

An eternity.

All of them seemed to flash past him after he heard her random question. He sat like an idiot who had forgotten how to breathe, and perhaps he had, for he was sure he had never loved anyone in his whole entire existence. Except for maybe his mother, because what kind of sick bastard doesn't love their mother?

But then Neil looked at Rachel, and her azure eyes were so clear he could've sworn she wasn't drunk. The girl was not even looking at him yet he could see the white-hot fire in her eyes, despite the tears. He reflected on their relationship, yet he didn't know what he meant to her (if anything at all), so he asked:

"What am I to you anyway, Rachel?"

She hesitated, and by then her tears were nothing more than faded streaks on her face.

Swishing the glass bottle back and forth, she simply replied, "My friend."

Neil does not have time to think or move or even finish the breath he's taking when she seemingly lunges at him, and her lips are suddenly on his and he can taste the strange mingling of _her_, with her smoky, somewhat acidic breath. He's at a loss for what to do since he's never kissed a girl before, much less anyone. But she's on top of him and (she's kind of grinding on his crotch) is quite strong for being completely wasted, so he lays there, giving her permission to "have her way with him".

Although try as he might, Neil can't ignore the foreign sensation of her tongue practically begging him to open his mouth, and his curiosity gets the best of him as he opens it slightly. He sure as hell doesn't expect her to bite him and he lets out a light yelp, causing her to pull back and stare at him with her eyes wide and terrifyingly sober.

"You've never kissed a girl before." She sounded shocked when the phrase left her mouth and Neil was astounded by that much. "Of course I kind of expected that, but that adorable little sound you just made makes me want to take you home, you know, a little wine-and-dine and then I'd _fuck your brains out_."

Against his will his face grew as red as a tomato while he pushed the hysterical Rachel off of him. Her laughing caused her to become unaware of the fact that she was literally rolling on the floor laughing, tears coming out of her eyes. Neil became ten times more uncomfortable than he was when Rachel was crying tears of he-doesn't-know-exactly, but now it was because she couldn't seem to stop convulsing on the floor about his nonexistent sexual experience. The temptation to throw her out of his house and never let her in again grew tenfold and he abruptly grabbed one of her arms; by then she was reduced to giggling softly and she was back to her bubbly drunken stupor.

"Are you gay or something? Because I would think that what I just did there would get any virginal guy off," she said, her lips forming a pout.

Neil shook his head. "You're unbelievable."

Rachel smiled. "No; just drunk. Now will you be a gentleman and walk me home or what?"

* * *

Rachel was human.

She was also downright perplexing. Neil didn't know what to make of her as he dragged her home, though it was after she sexually assaulted him for what, the third time? The fact that she could so openly talk about sex like it was nothing affirmed his belief that humans were going downhill in life, that this process of accumulating the human race was now part of everyday life even for the younger generations.

Rachel went on blabbering about her promiscuity during her high school years, and Neil reluctantly recalled the fact that high school was never in his agenda; rather, he let himself drop out after he turned sixteen, a decision he didn't regret in all its punctuality. He never thought a monotonous life with a stable job and a family was appealing, so it didn't particularly matter that he didn't complete his education. What's the use of being educated if he did not find intellectual abilities vital to his existence? However, by the world's supposedly high standards, intellect is the greatest necessity of all, a fact that Neil basically ignored as if it were his own family.

In other words, he didn't mind becoming an animal dealer. If that's what his life would amount to until he subsequently died, then so be it. He wasn't good at much anyway.

The only other career choice he really considered was becoming a musician, specifically a bassist or a guitarist. For his fifteenth birthday his mother had successfully scrounged up enough money to buy him a used four-string bass guitar, which was the only good thing going in his life at the time. His interest in music had always been present somewhere in his being, so he dedicated much of his time to teaching himself how to play. He cherished that bass with his own life despite its difficulty to tune, as the silence of their home (if you even had the audacity to call it that) was to be kept pure in lieu of his father hearing it. Of course, there were times when he felt like throwing the ancient thing out the window, for he could never find any opportunity to actually use it in life. Neil hadn't any friends with whom to start a band or even jam with, making the activity quite lonely. But there was something about the black bass guitar that made him feel as though he weren't alone.

There was something about Rachel he couldn't find in himself to pinpoint. It was bizarre to think that she, like him, was human. She was just made up of skin and bones and muscle tissue, but that's not quite right is it. There's more to humans than that which makes life so complicated, and as Neil put it, unimportant. He didn't bother himself with attempts at understanding other people, because what's the use if you know that they're just skin and bones and muscle tissue and will die someday anyway? Rachel was definitely an enigma, although he didn't want her to be. He found that he wanted to know her like she knew herself (frightening!), but perhaps she didn't know her own person? These kinds of questions roused in Neil's head as he thought more about her, the strange woman. Did she like him? Did _he _like _her? _He wasn't even sure of what she meant to him, especially because that mortifying question ("Do you love me?") rose. He hadn't talked to her since the incident, and she hadn't stopped by, either. That genuinely surprised him, as he thought she would just laugh and pass it off as nothing. And maybe she had; he just wasn't there to witness it.

But in the end, who was he to act as though he knew her and what she would do?

* * *

**I don't feel quite right leaving this here, but writer's block kind of prevents me from going further. If I feel like it in the future I may write some more to this, but I'm not sure now.**

**So this is basically Neil doing some soul-searching after he meets Rachel, and she pretty much makes him question everything from his manhood, his sexuality, and thus to his decisions in life and if he really has any regrets.**

**It's a bit disorganized and has random bursts of what-the-hell-just-happened, but that's how I perceived it after I finished it. I'll leave you to your own opinion.**

**Thanks for reading and review if you want.**


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